"She had a lively,playful disposition,which delighted in anything ridiculous."-Jane Austen

Tag Archives: wandering

Have you ever, at some point in your adult life, had some moment where you look around and think, “How the heck did I wind up here?” I have. I admit it. And I had a similar moment just recently.

I have a four year old who has recently been having some major separation anxiety issues. I don’t mean he just misses me when I’m not there. I’m talking about practically-has-a-complete-emotional-breakdown-if-he-can’t-see-you level of anxiety. If we are at home and I get up off of the couch to go into the kitchen, within 1 to 2 minutes I’ll hear him call for me and say “Where are you?!” He doesn’t like it when he can’t see us, which means school is also difficult now. A couple of weeks ago I was dropping him off in the morning and he said he didn’t want to go to school, which is SO not like him. When I asked him why not, he said, “Because you’ll leave. And I can’t see you.” So I knelt down and talked to him about how that’s okay, because I always come back. While he’s at school, I just go back home, etc. And then he looked at me and said, “But what if you get lost?” Heartbreakingly adorable. I told him, “Don’t worry, I’m not lost. I know right where I am.”

At the time, I didn’t really think much about it. I mean, when I said that to him it meant something. But I didn’t realize how much it would mean to me when I thought back over it later. I’m a planner. I always have everything mapped out, to the tiniest detail. And I don’t always like it when the plans change, but I can deal with it, because I always have a plan, so I can still feel like a control. But thinking back over those words brought me to one of those moments where I thought, “I’m not lost. I know right where I am. But where exactly is that? And how the heck did I get here?”

You see, looking at my life and how wonderfully amazing it is right now, it is absolutely nothing like I thought it would be. In no way whatsoever does it match up to any plan that I’ve ever come up with for my future within the last ten years of my life. And it practically floored me to realize this all of a sudden, but…I’m okay with that. Somehow with all of the changes I’ve had in my life over the last couple of years, and with how caught up I’ve been with my own busy-ness (<–is that even a word?), I’ve wandered away from all of the specific plans I’d been clinging to. But I’m okay with that. Actually, I’m more than okay with that–I’m totally thrilled and blissfully happy with it, because if I hadn’t, my life wouldn’t be what it is right now. And it is many things each and every day: fun, crazy, hilarious, hard, hectic, happy, frustrating..and amazing. A gift.

Its a lesson I didn’t even really consciously set out to learn, but learn I did. Sometimes the best gifts are the ones you stumble across outside of your box or off of the beaten path.